1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for issuing a digital certificate to an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer or an MFP.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital certificate technology has recently been widespread for the purpose of preventing communication with so-called “spoofing”. However, anyone can create a digital certificate itself by the use of well-known technology. For this reason, other person may possibly create a digital certificate without permission and abuse the same.
In order to avoid such a situation, in the case where communication is performed in an open network such as the Internet, usually, a digital certificate is used for which a reliable Certificate Authority (CA) provides a digital signature.
At the time of performing communication, a person to whom a digital certificate was issued uses a private key that a Certificate Authority gave only to the person and executes a digital signature on data that is a communication target. Thereby, confidence can be given to the other end of the communication. Accordingly, the private key should be so handled that it is not stolen by other people.
A Certificate Authority generally uses confidential mail in order to ensure the delivery of a private key to an applicant himself/herself. Further, of a public key prepared in a terminal in advance and a private key corresponding thereto, the Certificate Authority accepts the public key. Then, the Certificate Authority executes a digital signature on the public key, thereby to issue a digital certificate.
Incidentally, along with a growing need for a digital certificate, there has been a demand for simplification of issuance of a digital certificate.
While there are proposed application technology concerning confidential communication using a digital certificate as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,263,435 and U.S. publication No. 2003-163702, nothing is proposed for a method for facilitating the issuance of a digital certificate.